


Run

by LeighJ



Series: Depraved [4]
Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Anal Play, Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Blow Jobs, Brutes, Come Eating, Come Shot, Come Swallowing, Comeplay, Creampie, Daryl Dixon Smut, Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene Smut, Explicit Language, F/M, Fantasy, Fluff and Smut, Full Shift Werewolves, Hiding, Hormones, Hunters & Hunting, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Killing, Kissing, Nudity, On the Run, Oral Sex, POV Beth, POV Beth Greene, Painful Sex, Painplay, Predator/Prey, Public Blow Jobs, Public Sex, Riding, Rimming, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Royalty, Running, Savage Land, Savages - Freeform, Sex, Sexual Tension, Shameless Smut, Short, Smut, Strangers, Strangers to Lovers, Swearing, Tension, Threats, Threats of Violence, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vaginal Sex, Violence, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Sex, Werewolves, Werewolves Turn Into Actual Wolves, vulgar, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 01:43:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14558112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeighJ/pseuds/LeighJ
Summary: A Princess on the run and looking for a place to hide. A savage with a burdened past and guilt to shed. Two seperate lives, entwining in the most surprising ways.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Miss me? I feel like I haven't been around in ages but trust me, I've been cooking up stuff. I am planning a new fic by the name of A path we choose but I've got A LOT of plans for it so I'm taking it slow. God knows when I'll finally post it so I've got this little fic while you wait. This is 9 chapters and it scares THE SHIT out of me. It's fantasy and werewolves and worldbuilding, things I've never really given a try with before. I'm slightly nervous to the reception of it. My readers will know I really only write AU or ZA. so this is a whole new -literal- world for me so I really hope you like it. Thank you to Wallflow3r for beta'ing, encouraging and going ape shit crazy for this fic when I was so unsure about it and for writing some of the hottest smut known to man. Jesus. Have you guys read her shit yet!?

“Did you hear that there’s a Nansi bitch runnin’ ‘round?” A cruel, dark voice asks as it reaches for Beth around the corner she’s hiding.

“Nansi? _Please_ , that pack died out years ago in’ the Greene massacre.” Another disbelieving voice answers. “Certainly ain’t no bitches to breed with anymore. Hell, they’re the fuckin’ royal’s man, every dog would wanna get his dick in her.”

“Exactly what I’m sayin’ Dwighty boy. We happen’ to find her an’ I want that cunt first. I don’t do sloppy left overs. S’why Cherry had to go, am I right?” The first voice responds with a sinister chuckle.

The other voice: ‘Dwighty’ or maybe Dwight, snorts. “You want every cunt, Negan. Any cunt. Even _my_ sloppy left overs.”

“Yeah, an’ I always get it too. S’why Cherry’s cunt was ruined after me,” Negan snaps back in a fading voice as they turn into a different alley.

Beth squeezes her eyes closed and tries not to panic, even as she trembles where she stands. People know she’s here, people _believe_ she’s here. It’s her own fault. She got stupid, desperate, revealed herself too many times to the public. There’s no mistaking who she is with her blonde hair and yellow flecked blue eyes. The Greene daughter, the last surviving member of the Greene family from the royal pack Nansi. No other pack looks like the Nansi. Every other pack is either dark or variations of browns. Some blue eyes, some green. Plain though, not gifted with the golden dust of royalty in their pools of colour.

She slipped up and now people believe in the whispers of her escape from death. They’ll hunt her down and force pups in her belly. Pups she can’t have. Pups she can never carry, a useless woman, barren; with the inability to breed. Beth fled because she was the only surviving daughter of the her family slaughter; the only living heir. She fled not because she couldn’t lead. Her older brother Shawn was killed in a rebellion when she was young, so the throne was to be Maggie’s: her older sister. Some packs declare only to have men as their Kings but the Nansi never cared for such customs.

The only problem was, Maggie denounced her right to the throne in a public gathering. She was in love and planned to breed with a Dalka named Glenn, a pack that were known for their old ways and old Gods. They didn’t follow customs or rules and were barely tolerated. Her father was furious that the Dalka should insult his hospitality by allowing their unruly ways for so long, simply for one of their own to try and claim his daughter, a Princess by right and royalty by the blood in her veins and the gold in her eyes. That day is the one and only time Beth has ever witnessed the Tear.

The Tear is when royalty denounces their throne for a peasants life and the gold flecks leave their eyes. Dalka while unruly were not poor so it wasn’t much of a peasants life that Maggie was choosing. Regardless of her status to be, she had chosen to be a prized bitch rather than a Queen in their fathers eyes. Beth was to rightly take the throne and that’s when her father forced Maggie to teach Beth how to rule, as punishment for her betrayal. It was punishment because he didn’t consent to break the ties that bound her to her pack, something only an Alpha can do, until she completed her task.

It would be the day Beth took her rightful place and broke her bones in the Shift with her people as witness. From there she would fall into the heat of the full moon and let the man her father chose breed her with the future heir, this generation stronger than the last as has been the way since the beginning of time. That was how Beth discovered she was barren. Beth Greene is the reason there is only one Nansi alive today, one Greene. Because the man who tried to breed her couldn’t do it. No matter how much they fucked, how many times they lost themselves to the Heat and how many times he planted his seed in her, she didn’t catch.

They never knotted. She knew she was barren by the third week and he did too. He chopped her father’s head off for it. Burned her sister before her eyes and her Dalka lover too. Slaughtered the Nansi in their beds. The Dalka cast her out and took her throne as punishment for the death of one of theirs. They declared themselves royalty, despite their lack of golden hair or eyes, as if any one of their spineless dickhead men were Alpha’s, as if they would _dare_ if her father was still alive. With the Nansi dead and her exiled, the throne was theirs to keep.

The only good that has come of them is they murdered her husband. Beth’s never been so satisfied to see someone die. Now she can never go back to her place of birth in the Singing Valleys, even if the throne is hers. She can’t produce an heir and it’s better to lose the claim now than in a few months time, when another husband learns of her barrenness. Besides, no man will lie with her if they do find out and the Dalka would be happy to let them know, since Glenn, Maggie's lover, told them before his death. So _yes_ , she can lead but she won’t.

She needs to get away from here, somewhere far and somehow, very fast. Engaging in the Shift would leave a scent for miles. Men would be hunting her from every corner of the map. No, it’s her human half that has to carry her, slower than the wolf admittedly but still hers to command, to use. Turning in a hurry, Beth finds herself hurtling her body into something solid with rapid speed. It takes a second to understand it’s a muscular chest and the skin wrapped around it is as hot as freshly cooked meat. The smell of him hits her first, pounds through her cunt and tugs at her nipples like invisible ropes.

His voice hits her next, dark and husky, her spine tingling with its gravel quality. “You shouldn’t be here, Princess.”

Lastly, it’s the bulky, mysterious sight of him and all Beth can do is blink in surprise at this hulking shadow before her who has tied her tongue, his eyes masked by long, dark hair full of filth. “Princess?” She croaks. “I’m afraid you’re mista-”

“Ain’t no time for bullshit, Nansi, daughter of Alpha Greene. I got somewhere for you to go. Accept my help or don’t but don’t lie to my face,” the stranger snaps.

There’s really no other answer. “Okay, but we have to _hurry.”_

His lip curls and she sees the wolf just beneath the surface of him like a vibrating film on his flesh. “I know. I can smell your pretty little cunt just as well as the rest of ‘em.”

Beth’s breath catches in her throat. “An’ the Heat is gettin’ closer.”

“I know.” He smiles, slow and hot and disastrous to her breathing. “An’ I’m the last mutt you wanna be near when that happens. C’mon.”

He takes her wrist and they run.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next one! Your response to this has surprised me and blew me away! Thank you! And enjoy!
> 
> Thank you as always bestie for being an awesome better even when ruled by a tiny, so frickin' cute dictator.

They take a mad dash around a corner, Beth and this stranger who seems to know who she is and not care. They stop for breath, having run for longer than Beth can calculate. Her Wolf is faster but her human side keeps up too.

The man stops and Beth has to ask, “what’s your name?”

He cuts his eye to her sharply and in the moonlight it’s a blue that steals her breath away. “You don’t need it.”

Beth raises her eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

He flushes and looks uncomfortable when he speaks, but states it firmly: “you haven’t taken your throne back, Princess. You’re not my Queen yet.”

“I’m not anyone’s Queen in the Waste Lands,” she answers automatically, as if he should need reminding of where he keeps his bed. “You’re a plundered city of Rogues who take no King or Queen as their leader.”

The man chews his lower lip, his chest rising deep and slow in the soft shadows. “I’m Daryl.”

“I’m Beth,” she replies with a small smile. “You don’t have to call me Princess, I have no rights to the throne. It belongs to the Dalka now.”

Daryl narrows his eyes. “We shouldn’t talk ‘bout that out in the open. Don’t know who’s listenin’.”

Beth nods in agreement. She keeps slipping up, letting her tongue run loose and making stupid decisions. She finds herself glad to have someone who can reign her back in, who can set her straight. Daryl talks to her a lot more freely than she’s ever been spoken to before though and it takes some getting used to. All her life she’s been royalty. The Nansi had The Council which was the ruling government over her city, that is when it was alive. Every member of it was royalty, the whole city was. They all spoke to each other with the appropriate respect.

The maids and servants would adopt the same mannerisms, many if not all of them children of the Waste Lands. They would come to the royal city of the Singing Valleys nearly every day, begging for a life of servitude or death. The Waste Lands are cruel and dark. It’s home to a red sun that taints the world a bitter copper every time it rises. Not everyone knows how to survive here. With the shame of whatever crime their family committed to be exiled to the Waste Lands, the children would hang their heads before her father.

He was Alpha Greene and it was him they would pledge their allegiance to, him and his household. Her father was a merciful man and liked to see the good in people. Beth tried to adopt much the same attitude and sought to be a kind and giving Princess. She remembers the child of Simon Crowe, from the banished pack of Grete approaching their gates when she was fourteen and begging. It was a hard one for her father. Simon murdered her mother, her fathers second wife when Beth was little more than five years old. He was so torn that day, unable to follow his usual leader instincts and allow the boy life in light of the heartache Simon caused.

He managed it, after a day and night of pondering. Chose to give the boy to Beth to do with as she wished. It was pointless really since Beth already had maids to hand and he was a boy too. She did command him in the end, between her legs often. The boys name escapes her now as he ran in the night after he confessed his love. Beth reminded him that she didn’t feel as deeply for him as he for her, and that she would never breed with him either, would never even be allowed. He proclaimed from that moment that if he couldn’t have her and that she couldn’t love him, he couldn’t serve her.

It was a sad departure in the end because the boy had been with her for two years at that point and had witnessed her first Shift at fifteen and was there when she bled for the first time. The transition of child to adult and the birth of the Wolf are big parts of a woman's life, especailly a Princess and he was there for them. It's a shame she never grew to love him like  he wished, he was quite sweet.

“Y’ready? Not far now,” Daryl’s voice interrupts in her thoughts.

Beth blinks herself back into focus. “Huh?” When he stares she adds, “oh! Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”

There’s an amused smile on his face when he takes her wrist again. “You’re not very observant for a Princess. Did your father never teach you to hunt? To track?”

Her throat catches and she wonders if Daryl is being mean on purpose. The people in the Waste Land often tend to be. Rude, coarse and cruel wild things, Maggie used to tell her. Even so, it’s a possibility he doesn’t realise how old she is.

“I was to be taught in the weeks leadin’ to my eighteenth year. I was seventeen when my family was massacred.”

When she hears the words in her own ears, she feels empty and hollow but the _words_. They’ve full of dark, dangerous heat. A burning ache in her soul that won’t ever leave her, she’s sure of it.

Daryl swallows and squeezes her wrist. “M’sorry. Thought you were in your nineteenth year,” he rumbles with an edge of a whine.

She wonders if all these animalistic sounds are from the approaching Heat or if he's genuinely feeling apologetic. Every man will want to fuck and fight in this Heat, it could just be that. Women will be much the same with no previous lessons on how to keep it at bay. They’re all savages in the Waste Lands.

“I am. My father just never had the chance.” There’s a beat where his mouth parts like he might say something but then he stays silent. “We should hurry,” Beth presses as she glances to the half moon in the sky. “I need to be out of your company before the Heat.”

Daryl nods although his eyes dip to her revealing vest top and Beth feels the next breath in her chest push higher, pressing her nipples against the fabric. “Yeah,” he finally scrapes hoarsely. “Let’s go.”

They continue on their way at a run and Beth has to truly focus on her surroundings. It’s hard, with Daryl’s hot skin against her wrist. She knows it’s the approaching wave of Heat that makes her feel so moist between her legs, makes her want him so bad. Regardless of whether she understands why, it doesn’t change the fact and she can feel the sweat gliding between her breasts with the heat of him so near, the catch in her throat when his rough fingers rearrange themselves on her soft, delicate wrist. Knowing Daryl can smell her want is worse and even more intimidating.

Helping her for unknown reasons or simply because he wants to, he is still a man of the _Waste Lands_ for Christ sake. Beth isn’t entirely sure why she’s allowed him to drag her to unknown places, but she’s desperate and delirious, not quite in her right mind as the Heat approaches. The only thing she has to do is get away from him before it comes at exactly midnight tomorrow on the full moon. If they fuck, Daryl will discover she can’t breed, can’t even _knot_ and that she’s a barren wasteland. Maybe with this knowledge he’ll trade her on the market. She’s no good for anyone looking to come into power with their heir, but she’s still got a tight cunt.

Men like Negan -the man she heard talking earlier- will take enough satisfaction in that to buy her. Daryl would make more money than he’s probably ever seen in his life. In the Waste Lands, what better treasure is there than that? She almost stumbles and curses internally. She _needs_ to pay attention to where she’s going. He could be leading her into a trap. Except the decrepit little shack he brings her to barely looks like it can stand, let alone that it’s full of people waiting to take her at Daryl’s command. It’s on the edge of a cobbled street full of twitching curtains in windows smeared with sand from the storms.

The Singing Valleys have beautiful waterfalls, lush green life and the most stunning, sweet smelling flowers. The Waste Lands have sand and stone or wooden shacks. Grey and brown, dull and dead, no plants, no life but the human kind. Red sun, so denomic comparred to _her_ sun, the sun she knows deep in her soul: a ray of light in the sky, the gold sweet and empouring pouring over her skin, singing through her veins.

“In here,” Daryl whispers and she follows him through the door.

He doesn’t lock it. It’s a custom savages don’t keep. If someone wants to break down doors they will. Back at home, everyone locked their doors. It made her feel safer. Standing in the sparse living space with an unlocked door does not.

“We’re stayin’ here?” Beth asks.

Daryl throws a log from a pile into the dying fire and casts her a glance, the flames shadowing his scruffy face. “You thinkin’ ‘bout somewhere else?”

Beth shrugs. “You just made it sound like… like you have somewhere, y’know? Somewhere secure. We’re on the corner of a street in a shack everyone saw us enter.”

“Listen, _Princess,_ ” and the name is no longer wary but snarky and cruel. “I ain’t gotta do this. So sit down or leave, ain’t my problem.”

She frowns at him, almost hurt by his tone. The hormones are stealing all her rational thought. “So why are you helpin’?”

“Not a story I wanna tell,” he snaps. “Sit down or _leave._ Good luck to ya out there.”

Beth stares for a moment and then she sits down. She’s not in the mood to be kicked out on her ass, not tonight: she’s had enough. So she sits and shuts her mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, I did mean to post a while ago but I’ve been lost in GoT. After years of holding off, I finally crumbled! More fool me, can’t keep up with the heartbreak to be honest. Please no spoilers, I’m still bruised from Robb! This fic is kinda inspired from it you could say, George R R Martin is like crazy good and I can’t believe I’ve been missing out on him for so many years! Anyway, past my ramblings, thank you as always to beta and bestie wallflow3r, you make everything better ❤️❤️

"You hungry?" Daryl asks when he turns away from the fire. "I got some deer."

Beth's mouth floods wet with saliva and she can barely speak from it, to the point her words are all a breathless rush. "How'd _you_ get deer? They reside 'round the Singing Valleys. All you have here are dogs, rats and snakes."

Daryl smirks as he gingerly places the wick of a candle in the flames of the fire. "We have the black market."

"An' you have money for deer?" She presses.

He huffs a laugh. "There always this many questions 'bout your food? You hungry or not?"

"Yeah," she squeaks, maybe in answer to both questions so she clarifies, "I can't remember the last time I ate."

When he looks at her again it's sympathetic and she feels such hot, dark shame in her gut that her cheeks redden. God what has she become? A daughter of Alpha Greene now in the hands of a man from the Waste Lands, feeling sorry for her because she has no crown, no family; no food. In another life _she_ would have felt pity for _him_. Dirty and bedraggled, reduced to candle and fire light. A ramshackle pile of wood for a place to call home. Nothing like the magical place she grew up in; called home.  If all had gone to plan and her life had stayed its course, she would have gazed out of her bedroom windows at night, baby at her breast and husband sleeping in their bed, thinking about the poor people in the Waste Lands, wallowing in their seedy darkness.

Now here she is, hoping that darkness keeps her concealed. There's electricity in the Singing Valleys and in next to all the cities that surround it. The Waste Lands are one of the few places with no modern civilisation. Even her jeans, tank top and light jacket stick out like a sore thumb. Why didn't she think of this before? _Stupid, stupid, stupid._ Golden blonde hair and flecked eyes of blue, dressed in the rags of the rich, she screams the truth through her pores. She's been running for nearly two years now, slowly working herself out of the circle of civilisation, having run from its centre and now finding herself here.

It was easy to be in disguised in the rich cities, to just cover her head with a hood. Now there's nothing to hide with. No money to spend, no treasures to trade such as jewellery; not even trees to sleep in. There are woods some few miles out but no one who ventures out there comes back. It's not known what lies in the trees but whatever it or they are doesn't at all agree with the Wolf. Beth wouldn't go out there if her life depended on it and really, it does so that's saying something. Daryl startles her by leaving the room through a shadowy doorway and she's tense as she hears him banging around but he comes back with two things wrapped in his hands that smell like blood.

He collapses to the floor next to her, on the straggled blanket and proffers his fist. Meat. Deer meat. Uncooked and raw. Her throat closes in a mixture of hunger and disgust. As the Wolf, she can eat animals alive. Kill them with her teeth and claws alone, as her Wolf was created to do. As her human half and the body she lives in more than the Wolf, she feels queasy. The flesh is dangling in a torn, bloody ribbon and the blood isn't flowing but it stains Daryl's skin and is the headiest scent in her nose. Despite herself she takes it because the Wolf is pushing so hard against her bones this close to the Heat and she's starving, so hungry.

She really can't remember the last time she ate, what it was and if she liked it. Maybe that's been the cause for all her silly mistakes, her oversights and that makes it better somehow, to eat this uncooked meat because it will strengthen her, repair her back to the health she needs to be at. When it's in her fist it's cold and clammy, the smell of the blood so strong now it's making her woozy and she glances up at Daryl just because he's so silent. He isn't eating his own leg. At least she thinks it was a leg at some stage. He's staring at her, his pupils expanding in the red and gold of the fire as he tracks her movements.

There's something so primitive about it, so savage and paired so well with the blood on his hands and around his mouth. Beth lifts the meat and nearly can't do it, that little grip of her humanity springing forward with a tight grasp. She thinks of all the meals she had as a Princess, the heat of the ovens burning her palm when she couldn't wait for her food to cool down. The soft breads and the thick gravy that had rabbits stewing in them. The imagery carries her through and she lets her eyes fall closed, a growl that isn't made for her human throat tearing between her teeth as they cut into the cold meat.

Daryl growls back at her and goose bumps sweep her neck. The Heat is so close, it beckons her to tumble into the dark, sweet abyss as her flesh tears open. She bites deep and tears the meat back with a jerk of her head, feeling like the savage she shares company with and takes so much more pleasure in her food when Daryl mirrors her. Her Wolf appears in her mind, lips peeled back and sticky stands of saliva hanging from her gums. Teeth dangerously sharp and white streaked with red. The meat is devoured in a chorus of hungry tearing, of moans shared from her throat and his. Within seconds it's all gone and the harsh hit of the fullness in her belly makes her groan softly.

Daryl whines back and her eyes snap to his as he stares with a heaving chest at her presumably blood smeared face. There's no reason for Daryl to push his Wolf down, he has no fear of someone scenting him but he does anyway, his eyes sliding wider and wider in his skull and shrinking back. Beth's nipples tighten at such a display of control as she wonders why he's even bothering at all. The Heat isn't here yet but it is playing with their blood already, setting it to boil. Should he Shift now, Beth doesn't think she could run fast enough before he caught her. The image steals her breath: him chasing her, pursuing her, _hunting_ her.

She imagines what it would be like to actually knot, to feel the clutch of her pussy on his swelling cock and hurtling over the mythical ledge of pleasure. Maggie told her it was like nothing she could ever describe. A feeling of surreal love and light, a cresting of something building during the act of fucking. _Fuckin's good, but_ knottin', _Jesus Beth, it's insane. It's just insane. I hear that if you pass out, it's a boy._ Beth whimpers into the silence and Daryl's eyes slide back into humanity, his teeth bared. "We should get some sleep. I can sneak you outta here in the mornin'."

She takes a deep, steadying breath and wipes her bloody hands on her clothes rather than lick them. Oh well, she has to look like a savage right? "How'd you plan on doin' that?"

Daryl swallows softly and glances out of the glass window in the wall. "I know someone on the border. Can get you into the city of Scortum."

"The city of Whores?" Beth asks disbelievingly. "I avoided that place for a reason an' travelled through the Valley of Shadows! _The Valley of Shadows,_ where men go mad!"

"Why? Can't fake bein' a whore for a day of travellin'?" Daryl asks with a twisted smile.

"Can't fake suckin' every generals dick to get through the border, _no,_ " Beth answers sarcastically. "When he was alive, my sisters Dalka lover said that people fuck in the streets and that the Wolf mates with women in their human forms."

"Why shouldn't they?" Daryl asks, still that same twisted smile. "S'the tightest pussy you ever felt."

Beth flushes. "So you've done it then? Hybrid fucked?"

He rolls a shoulder. "Watched it. Brother told me he's never knotted so hard."

The word alone makes her shudder, knowing she'll never experience such a thing. "That's savage fuckin'. We ain't like that in the Singing Valleys."

"No, you let woman mount men there," Daryl says with a snarl.

Beth cocks her head in interest. "You wouldn't have a woman mount you?"

"Ain't never wanted pussy enough to let it control me," he answers immediately. "'Til that day comes, I'll fuck every woman on her hands an' knees. S'where a bitch belongs."

"You're ignorant," Beth says without malice. "Blind to pleasures you could have for a sense of control. You're not an' Alpha."

"Don't need to be an' Alpha to know how to fuck."

This conversation is making her cunt react too sharply and the Heat is too close to indulge in it. "Where can I sleep?"

Daryl clears his throat and jerks his head. "I'm gonna be in here. S'a mattress in the other room for you."

"Yours?" She questions curiously. "Why be so hell bent on puttin' a bitch in her place when fuckin', an' yet so insistent on bein' a gentleman when not?"

He looks her deep in the eyes, stirring her belly with excitement and very lowly whispers, "'cause we're not fuckin'."

A sharp, hot pang explodes between her thighs and she clamps her teeth down on her bottom lip to stop her whimper. "I wanna be in here, with the fire," she pushes out instead.

Daryl continues to stare and then shrugs. "I'll drag the mattress in here."

"Okay," Beth whispers, her nipples so tight it aches.

"Okay," he repeats before he leaves the room again.

Beth takes a breath and closes her eyes. She really needs to get out of here. When he comes back with the mattress, he picks up the blankets and puts them on it, despite it already having blankets.

"Why are you helpin' me?" She whispers as he works. "I need to know if I can trust you Daryl an' right now…"

"You don't," he supplies for her before he sighs. "I'll tell ya but only so you'll shut the hell up an' go to sleep. Ain't gonna give two fucks if you don't trust me an' walk outta the door. S'your funeral or bastard children, whatever comes first."

Beth scowls lightly. If she's learnt anything so far it's that he's so damn difficult. "Go on."

He clears his throat and drops down on the mattress, violently yanking the laces out of his boots as he begins to talk in a hard, deep voice. "Your father cast mine out when I was four."

She feels a clutch of fear at her pulse and sways down onto the mattress. Is he doing this out of revenge? Does he plan to keep her here as she feared? Hurt her? Fuck her? Sell her? What? _What_? She's spent so long in her head and with her thoughts and she's so sick of them by now that she doesn't even want to ponder.

"We used'a live in Dempa, city closest to the Singin' Valleys."

Beth gapes in horror. She remembers the stories of Dempa, of the devils that rode the Wolf's back and turned men crazy. She visited it once in the dead of night with her friends. She snuck out to do it, her family would have been horrified. Standing on the ash of the city burnt by the command of her own father, hair whipping in the howling winds, she had never felt so small. Life could just be blown away and swept into the fires.

"Father was Alpha," Daryl keeps going, stirring her attention back to him. "Was a crazy dick. Beat the shit outta me an' my brother for years. His own mate too: my Ma." He pauses to growl here, his chest vibrating through her bones where they're both sat on the mattress. "Crazy bastard."

"Alpha Greene sent us packin' when the cunt killed my Ma. She was fuckin' his Beta. Was all kinds of fucked. A Wolf turnin' on his mate, his mate fuckin' 'nother guy, his blood brother no less. Beatin' his pups. His men raped, killed an' ate the people when we were cast outta the Trace pack."

Beth stares at him in fascination, the stories feeling so old and hallowed in the orange flames, like myths and legends, fairy tales and prophecies.  _He will heal the barren lands, the child of enemies._ Daryl's story makes her feel roughly four years old, tiny and with such blonde hair people would gasp and ask if it was spun gold, their hands clutched over their mouths. Beth remembers how much she enjoyed their comments and told her mother so. Her mother had laughed and told her a story of a legend with hair as bright as hers who was the first known Wolf.

The beginning of their ancestry. It led her to tell Beth other stories, sat on her Mama's knee before the fire, covered from the shoulders in buttery furs. The first prophecy her mother told her was that one: _he will heal the barren lands, the child of enemies._

Daryl continues, eyes set in the fire and lost to his tale. "Alpha Greene only cast out the Dixon's, said the pack could try again. Was fair. Was good. Pack went an' fucked it up an' they were burnt with the city. Me an' Merle, we're two outta seven that survived an' there's one woman. Old, too old to breed an' there's no mates to be found to carry our pups, so we're dyin' out. Nearly gone, all of us."

She licks her lips nervously, her heart racing with the story. "What's this have to do wit-"

"With me helpin' you out?" He cuts her off with a chuckle lacking amusement. "Feel like I gotta make up for it somehow. There were some good people y'know? Lotta kids. Lost my own sister to the burnin' beam'a the house. Ain't Alpha Greene's fault, I know that. He was fair but I gotta do summat with my life here, right? Gotta try."

A low, sweet ache pierces her chest and even though it makes her gut flame with heat, she lays her hand over his forearm, his skin so hot and dry. "You're a good guy, y'know that? Even if you won't let a woman mount you."

He chuckles softly, this time warm but slightly hoarse as he glances at her pale fingers on his dark skin. "I get you outta here, I move some'a that guilt crushin' down on me."

Beth sighs softly, shame curling through her chest as she moves her hand from his skin, her cunt a throb that falls to at least the middle of her pile of thoughts. "M'sorry I can't take the throne back an' give you some kinda life for your help. I ain't got nothin' to offer you."

Not even a child.

Daryl shakes his head and stretches out, laying his forearm over his forehead and closing his eyes. "I don't need nothin'. I know my place, I got that part down. I'm a mutt, always have an' will be. I don't know why you ain't goin' back but you should. This life ain't for you."

It's almost demeaning but she doesn't think he intends for it to be. He's simply stating facts. It could even be concern. She smiles loosely and lies down too, draping a blanket over her legs. No more thinking today, her brain is so tired. She ate and she's getting some sleep. She's safe, in some sense so she gives into it and closes her eyes. Tomorrow night is the Heat and she needs all her energy to run.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you as always wallflow3r for being an awesome beta and thank you all for your amazing comments. Here’s the next one!

In total, and this is including the endless tossing and turning, Beth thinks she gets about five hours worth of sleep.

The red sun is brutal crimson when it rises, bathing everything in a gauzy red the likes of which she’s never experienced. The red sun was made for the Waste Lands, her father told her, a bright spotlight hung by the Gods as punishment.  It settles so perfectly in the sky every day and doesn’t touch at all onto the other sun: golden rays further afield, raining on the rich cities and most brightly on the Singing Valleys. Beth remembers that warm heat, that peaceful light stroking her limbs and eyelids. The red sun is so much harsher and reaches deep into her being, throwing her into dreams of the Wolf and the tearing of flesh, the pounding adrenaline of the hunt.

When her eyes burst open for the final time her heart is racing and everything is still. There are no birds here like there are in the Singing Valleys, hence the name. Beth learnt her love of singing from them, trying to copy their harmonious tune. She misses them in the same way she misses her destroyed home and dead family: deep in her soul.  Even when she manages to groggily get up and pull the heavy, dark drapes, by the time she lies back down she doesn’t want to sleep. There’s something entrancing about the red sun, fighting the other golden sun for its place in the sky and so she gets back up and opens the drapes again.

When Beth looks up at it, she feels as if a frisson of skin in pulling away from her body like a zipper on a coat. Peeling her open and revealing the inner core of her where her Wolf lays hidden beneath the layers of her flesh and the protection of her bones. The Heat is there like a threat, nestled like a seed in the rays that touch her through the window since she got back up and opened the drapes. Daryl stirs behind her, groaning and she’s surprised for a moment because she thought he would be more used to this sun. More used to it than her for certain but he does have the drapes and he probably sleeps longer when they’re closed.

She doesn’t want to close them though now she’s found this quivering feeling. It’s like looking over a ledge and not knowing if she has the strength to not tumble over it. Her human side is holding on by her fingernails today with the Heat coming in a few hours. She thinks of all the pups that’ll be conceived tonight, all the woman who will spend until their next bleed wondering if they’ve bred. Royalty have always had the ability of knowing if they’ve bred which is how Beth knew she hadn’t. You can’t breed without knotting but there have been cases of babies not being conceived when knotted. It’s always torture, her friends used to tell her, waiting for the next bleed. 

No one quite knows why, for all the packs still living, there’s little information on their ancestors or their ways. Beth knows one thing at least, she’ll get far enough away that her Wolf won’t go looking for a male and her scent won’t reach a male nose until the morning light. By that time she’ll be gone. It’ll be a relief in itself shedding her skin for the night anyway, something she hasn’t done since the last Heat six months ago. Her Wolf will be a little more satisfied by the freedom although not as much as she would be if she were fucked. A stirring steals her attention and she glances over her shoulder at Daryl as he turns on his side to face her.

The red is a good colour for him considering this kind of red is not anyone’s colour. His chest is bare and she realises he must have removed his ragged hoodie. Though the sleeves must have been ripped because she recalls seeing his bare arms. She can see them again now as well as all his bare skin and everything in her body tightens deliciously slow. There’s something relaxed about him that captures her attention. A kind of liquid grace to his muscles that calls for release and relaxation. A good fuck, a full meal, a mate rounded with his child and feeding another on her breast. His hair is mussed around his face, so long it brushes his shoulders. 

The length of hair on the Wolf is affected greatly by the human’s hair and she can picture him. Large, furry, wickedly fast and hulking. When the wetness spills between her swollen pussy lips, dampening panties that were already well on there way to soaked, Beth smells it. Daryl does too, she knows he does because that soft, sinus move of his muscles hardens like stone. She watches his body collect itself, solidify and then he sits up with a grunt, rubbing his eye with the back of his hand as he hunches on the edge of the mattress.

His corded pants are formless and hang from his waist, his broad back slashed with scars. Many people have them. It’s the way of the Wolf but Daryl’s are so much more impressionable. The deep cuts so stark they must have been carved by the whip of a belt.  So much pain there, so many beatings he didn’t deserve and they’re guarded too, by the angels and demons, their wings detailed ink needled deep into his flesh. Did he get them to signify his story? The devil: his father or maybe him, in his eyes. The angel… she wonders if he has one.

If there’s one person he prays to, looks for guidance from. In her eyes she sees him as the angel, the protector of his shame, tied around his ankle as a dead weight and always fighting his devil father. For many things she imagines. The rights to his own body and scars, the right to his own legacy, away from the dark shadow of the man who helped create him. His ink is haunting, truly and there is a story there, one she now knows. It makes her feel closer to him somehow. Close enough maybe, that she could mark those scars with her tongue, if she wanted to. Beth shudders as she imagines her fingertips touching them through skin and fur. They must bulge so thick when he’s the Wolf, maybe a dark pink in the nest of dark brown. 

Beth swallows and watches his shoulders hunch tightly as he fumbles for his hoodie. “Best get goin’.” He pauses to swallow thickly and his voice is tight; hoarse. “Heat’s comin’.”

Damn straight it is and she needs to be over that border by noon. “Daryl I don’t think the city of whores is where I should be in the Heat. They’re made for fuckin’. I won’t even need to Shift to be forced on the dick of a man.”

He turns his head in a sharp whirl to look at her and breathes through his nose like a horse, eyes flaring wide. “Y’right. Fuck, didn’t think. _Shit_.”

“S’it that bad? That guy you know on the border, can’t he get us through somewhere else?” Beth asks with a rising sense of dread, the red sun beating on the back of her neck. 

“Naw,” he answers gruffly, pulling the hoodie on before he pushes to his feet. “Need another plan. Need to see Rick.”

“Rick?” She repeats the unfamiliar name. “Should we be gettin’ other people involved?” She raises her hand to chew her nail, a habit she shook once but she’s found again. 

“Trust Rick, he’s a friend. Knows some people on the border I don’t. Pick a city.” He states at her hard like she should make the choice now and she really should but she’s gone blank.

“I-I don’t know. You pick. Don’t matter where I’m goin’, only that I’m runnin’,” she says in little more than a panicked whisper.

Daryl frowns. “You ain’t gonna be able to do this forever, Princess-”

“Beth.”

“Beth. There’s gotta be more.”

“Why’d you care?”

“I don’t.”

“But you’re just helpin’ me right? Cause’a all this guilt you got?” She snaps spitefully.

“We all got jobs to do,” Daryl snaps back. “I know mine.”

She looks at him for a beat before the tension deflates out of her. “There’s really… nothin’. Nothin’ for me.” She laughs bitterly. “I don’t really know why I’m still tryin’.”

When she looks back at him she expects him to look as terrified as people in the rich cities would have. Mentions of giving up or giving in is a weakness that shouldn’t be a choice for the Wolf. It shows an overshadowing of the human side, a loss to the warrior inside. Humanity is not wildly accepted even though it’s the form that ironically, nearly everyone stays in the most. The longer he looks at her the deeper the words penetrate the silence and bounce back. In his eyes she sees understanding and it terrifies her. She’s from the Singing Valleys, she’s the daughter of Alpha Green and of the pack Nansi, the royal line; her blood bleeds blue and her eyes are gifted with the golden dust of royalty.

She should be smacked in the mouth and shaken for being so absurd as to think about… About…

Giving up.

She swallows and glances away. “Just pick somewhere with Rick. I’ll wait here.”

“I ain’t leavin’ you,” Daryl grouses as if he’s not particularly pleased about it.

“It’s stupid for me to go out in the day, we don’t even know-”

There’s a crash as the front door caves and the windows go through.

A blur of shapes and snarls rip through the air, leaving Beth tumbling to the floor, her face slamming off the wall on the way down. Her cheekbone throbs and then someone has her hair. Beth screeches and reaches up blindly, tearing with her nails at the fist in her knotted strands. She manages to glance up with tears in her gaze in time to see Daryl’s fist flying into the nose of the guy who has her. The grip releases and she stumbles to her feet.

Daryl catches her by the arms, hauling her towards the door where she has to elbow a man in the face who blocks the bare archway. “Go!” Daryl shouts. “I’m right behind you!”

“I’m not leavin’!” She shouts back. 

This is her fault, she can’t just _leave_.

“GO!” He roars.

The whine that slips from her throat is not her and she feels her skin split at the sides like a bust seam, the zips of her flesh falling away, taking her humanity with it. The Wolf slinks free and snarls, vision narrowed to a tunnel on Daryl. He bares his teeth at her, dares her to defy him and even though the human has been suppressed she screams silently when her Wolf turns tail and runs.  

We all got jobs to do.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guy, sorry for the wait, I hope it’s worth it! Thank you as always wallflow3r for believing in this fic and making me believe in it when it terrified me ❤️

It's hours before he finds her.

There was really no where for her to go and with the fear that every man around could pick up her scent, she had to Shift again. The problem is her clothes didn't come with her. Naked and burning under the red sun, she pants in a dark alley. He rounds the corner with a split lip and a black eye already forming. He still has clothes so he must not have Shifted. Another feat of control that she marvels at somewhere inside. The nearer he draws the faster her pulse thuds. His eyes are keen on her body, drinking her down like she's a tall glass of everything he wants right now. Gaze sliding from body part to body part.

The dip of her collar bones, the length of her throat, the rise and fall of her chest until finally he hits the apex of her thighs. The black in his eyes swallows up the blue and Beth is breathless for a moment too long. She has to take in a deep, shaky breath of air after but it's infused with the smell of him and she nearly wobbles on her knees. Distracting her, he passes over a handful of fabric.

"Where'd you find this?" She asks as she bundles up the fabric to her chest.

Daryl rolls his shoulder easily. "Some line hangin' out someone's window. Grabbed it when I was runnin'."

Beth laughs, pressing the fabric to her flesh for a few more minutes of cover before she has to flash him again to search for the hole her head goes through. "Thanks. Do you know who those guys were?"

He shakes his head. "Just know they wanted you. Beat it outta the last guy," Daryl answers, looking intently at the cheekbone that connected with the wall and is now throbbing violently, rather than her body.

When she finds the hole, she loops it over her head, blinding herself for the moment and baring her nude body: small breasts and coarse curls between her legs. She realises as it falls down her frame that it’s like a dress, a soft egg blue a bit too big for her and something she would have worn for sleeping. It's not like she has the time to be picky though and wherever she travels will expect her to look common. The only problem she faces now is that she doesn't have a hood.

“What 'bout my hair?" She asks as she stands, the skirt pooling around her legs. The neckline is too big so it gapes and bares her breasts more than she would really like.

Daryl is watching her with shrinking pupils that makes her bite back need pounding at her pulse but there’s still floods of excitement blooming between her thighs. "Rip summa the skirt off. Bind it up."

So that's what she does. Tearing at the hem, she leaves a jagged line that rises from her lower left leg to her right thigh. Whoops. She binds her hair and tucks the edges. Now she just has to avoid everyone's eyesight and hope for the best.

"You stink," he hisses. "C'mere."

A flush burns through her as she comprehends his words. She stinks. Of hormones, of heat and fertility though the last one is a hoax, a cruel one. She smells ripe. Beth walks closer even without knowing what he plans to do. Somehow in the last few hours she's known this man she's come to kind of trust him. It doesn't matter overly much, when she goes over the border she won't be seeing him again. She probably won't be seeing much of anything again truthfully. When she's heart-stoppingly close to him, he takes her in his arms as if he means to hug her which is exactly what he does. Beth folds into him and lets his scent mix with hers, his breath at her forehead and his one arm around her back, his hair brushing hers as he raises the other hand.

"That hurt?" He whispers as he clutches her tighter, his rough fingers gently touching on her swollen cheekbone as his eyes fall there, a mixture of emotion in the pools: anger and confusion, like he don't know why he's angry.

She shrugs softly. “Not really.”

Truthfully, it does but she’s a little distracted and woozy all wrapped up in his broad chest like this. She knows the hug is for practicality but still. Besides, she knows it won't do much and not for long. She wouldn't truly, intimately smell like him unless they bred together. Having slept in his bed, stayed in his home and having shared an embrace however, she has a window of chance to mask herself and he knows it. Beth stares up at him for a moment with fluttering lashes, her jaw angled by his hand and filling out his palm, wondering if he really cares or if he's just being polite. He's not a polite kinda guy though, he's rough and ready and savage.

After two years alone she's willing to take it and she presses into the touch, letting her lashes fluttered closed just once and just for a second. There's concern in his gaze; on his face when she opens her eyes again and it steals her breath. Does he care? Really care?

The rough pad of his thumb strokes her cheekbone softly, thumb rough but touch gentle and he surprises her that he can be like this, that he can be like this with _her_ as he grunts, "good."

For a moment she luxuriates in the hug. It's been a very long time since she's had human touch, any touch that wasn't rough like the cruel hand in her hair earlier. Daryl loosens a little too and his nose slips into her hair, inhaling audibly. Filling up his lungs with her.

Beth shudders and it seems to shake him free because he leans back and sniffs, finishing it with a deep breath like he enjoyed what he smelt. "S'better. Ain't fool proof… it'll do. Need to move."

"Move where?" She asks a little woodenly. "To Rick?"

Daryl looks to the sky and shakes his head, a movement that reveals the bow strapped to his back. She stares at it in surprise. It's a weapon. Weapons are things she's never seen before. Royalty believe in their Wolf, in their natural weapons. Rouges have weapons but then she remembers quite suddenly, that's exactly what he is.

"Naw," Daryl rumbles as he rolls his shoulder. "Lost too much time. Too close to the Heat. Rick was Alpha before, 'nother life an' he's already claimed'a secon' mate, he'd have a Princess for a third."

"You can't have two or three mates. There's only one," she corrects him.

Daryl cocks his brow. "I hear your father had two."

Beth flushes as if this is offensive. "Maggie an' Shawn's Mama was my fathers true mate. My Mama was a woman he fell in love with after. He never claimed her as a mate."

He rolls a shoulder like this is irrelevant which is probably is. "This's the Waste Lands. We're different."

Beth sighs and disregards the pointless conversation, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "I should just go alone. Into the woods."

There doesn't seem to be any other option and now her life is truly dependant on disappearing.

"No!" He hisses with wide eyes. "Woods are fuckin' crazy. You don't come back."

"It don't matter," Beth laughs a little deliriously. "What've I got to come back to?"

"It does matter," Daryl answers hotly. "I ain't lettin' you die."

"I'm gonna die out there anyway!" She bursts out. "Someone's gonna get me an' my soul will die when they rape me every day or someone's gonna kill me or I'm gonna do it myself. I'm gonna die."

"Hey, you _made it,_ " Daryl hisses as he advances on her, closing in on her space and filling it with his scent. "You got all the way to the Waste Lands from the fuckin' Singin' Valleys. You survived a fuckin' massacre, the end of your family line, just like me an' I'm here. I'm here an' you're here, you ain't lost yet, Princess."

Beth can't even laugh to break the tension, too strangled by the lust and ferocity in which she wants him to bend her double and fuck her cunt. This savage was born to the wrong life because his soul screams Alpha more than her own fathers did. An Alpha is chosen among the people. According to legend, years ago men fought for the position, proving their strength and honour. Now it falls in lineage from father to son or if no sons are bred, to the eldest brother of the prior Alpha. In the Singing Valleys, there was no gender preference which is why she could go back and claim her throne, if she could breed a child.

She swallows shakily, falling back a step. "So what'do I do?"

"Stop runnin'," Daryl says without missing a beat. "Stay here."

"Stay here?" Beth repeats. "In the Waste Lands? Where we were just attacked?"

"Dye your hair, chop it, whatever, you'll be fine." He talks faultlessly like he's got a list of answers waiting and she wonders to his motives. He claims to not give a rats ass about her but is he lying? Does he care?

"An' my eyes?" Beth challenges.

"Denounce yourself. Tear."

_Denounce yourself._

The words punch her straight in the throat, stealing her air.

"Stand before the people and denounce yourself. You'll be accepted. I'll protect you, I'll be there."

"Daryl… I-I _can't_. It's all I have. It's all I have left of them," she whispers brokenly, her eyes filling with tears. "An' even if I wanted to, even if I could, no one would let me stand an' denounce. They'd sell me or rape me first, I'm more profitable that way an' you know I'm right."

"We'll think of summat," he bites back at her. "Tomorrow. We'll work out what we're doin'."

"There's a lot of _we_ here but it's _me_ , Daryl. _Me_ an' _my_ burdens an' _my_ life. You have this irrational guilt you wanna shed cause of your messed up pack? Fine!" She shouts cruelly. "Don't use me for your own gain."

"I'm tryin' to fuckin' help you, you spoiled little brat not 'cause I got guilt, a'right? Nah, was for that. Was. Now it's 'cause you cry out in your fuckin' sleep, you know that? You call for 'em. Maggie. Daddy. Mama. Shawn."

The tears in Beth's eyes sting as they mix with the sweat that pours into them and release, sliding down her cheeks. They're her private names for them, informal and special and _precious_. He's not lying and in the course of one night she's made this savage pity her so deeply he'll risk his life.

"You're a fuckin' kid, Beth. You ain't made for this. You ain't." He punches the words through his teeth, gripping her forearm tight.

She turns her face away in shame and embarrassment. Being called a kid stings. She's not a child, she's not. "Child I am not but regardless, you can't help me. No one can help me."

"Fine," Daryl spits mockingly, throwing her hand away. "But I deserve to know why. _Why_ won't you go back an' take what's yours? Why are you willin' to come to the fuckin' Waste Lands and escape into the goddamn woods where _nothin' returns_? Why?"

With the rising levels of his voice and the tightening tension in the atmosphere, Beth's stomach winds tighter and tighter and _tighter_ until she explodes violently, spilling her darkest, deepest shame between them like poison. "Because I'm barren! Okay? Because I can't knot an' I can't breed an' I can't produce an’ heir and when all my people work that out they'll toss me back out themselves!"

Her chest gallops dramatically, her forehead drenching in sweat and her fresh dress staining with it. They're so close and she can taste everything she wants on his skin. Control and lust and power. She stumbles backwards and gulps in air.

Daryl takes a shuddering breath, his eyes wide and shocked. "Y'cant knot?"

Tears of embarrassment prick at her eyes as she shakes her head. "I'm barren. I tried. With my husband and then his brother, when he demanded it."

At this Daryl's lip curls. "That's sick."

She laughs miserably. "Yeah, it is."

He sighs deeply and swipes his sweaty forehead with a frustrated growl. "We need to hide you, specially 'cause'a that. Will get you on the black market if they can't use you for an' heir."

She cocks her head slightly as she dries her eyes. "An' you don't wanna put me on the black market?"

Daryl scoffs like the very idea offends him. "They hell would I wanna do that for?"

Beth shrugs. "Money?"

"Don't need money," he spits. "Just wanna be happy an' I won't be, if I don't help you."

"'Cause'a your guilt?" She asks softly.

Staring into her eyes, he shakes his head. "'Cause I don't wanna see you hurt."

A watery smile tugs at her lips. "Thank you. I don't wanna see you hurt neither."

He grunts, flushing with either heat or embarrassment. "C'mon. Need to get you away... Away from everyone. Away from me. Wolf is interested in you an' it ain't s'pure s'my inten'ions."

Beth nods breathlessly, the words thrumming through her veins. With each beat of her pulse she's staring to feel that she no longer agrees. He knows now. There's no secret to hide. What other reason is there not to give into the Heat and fuck? She knows she wouldn't knot, wouldn't breed but so what? It'll be something won't it? Some kind of relief? Maybe it's not worth it for him if she can't knot. Maybe it doesn't feel the same. She really wouldn't know. She didn't talk to her husband when they did it, just let him do what needed to be done. He didn't sound like he enjoyed it so maybe there is something in the knotting that makes it worth while. Something that makes her useless.

Clearing her throat, very softly she whispers, "why?"

He tenses and pins her with eyes so shrunken, so close to the Wolf Beth feels a spill of wetness drip down her thigh. "Ain't my mate. Ain't mine to fuck."

"You won't know until the Heat."

The Heat is more than just a wave of animalistic nature, of temptation for the Wolf. The Heat is where mates are found. A man will sniff for a scent and usually the one he follows will be his mate. That's not to say he can't smell others and get distracted. A mate isn't always found in the Heat but chances are higher. If Daryl couldn't resist dropping to his knees and tasting her juices then that would be the start of the Bonding.

"Like we would be mates. I'm a mutt. You're a Princess. It don't happen."

"But if we are?"

"If we ain't?"

"So what? Why can't we just-"

"No," he grates. "I fuck my mate. That's it an' I ain't waitin' 'round to see it go wrong."

"Go wrong?" Beth repeats incredulously. "Am I so disgustin' to you? You told me you fucked other women! Why not me? Jesus we're runnin' from all these men who want me, who would! Why not you?"

"Yeah, did. Look I ain't gotta explain shit. We're gettin' you out of here, we ain't _fuckin_ '. We can talk 'bout you stayin' after."

"I ain't stayin'," she hisses just to be cruel. "I'm sure I'll find someone in the Heat."

"Sure you will," he says a little more calmly though his thick neck is red both from the high sun and his anger. "M'sure they'll rape you an' kill you when they don't feel you knottin'."

Again, it's that it could be malicious but it's just fact. Maybe it truly is concern. They're wasting time and there's nowhere to go.

"If has to be the woods," she states firmly. "An' with or without you I'm goin'."

He sighs and pulls the bow over his head and off his back. "Good thing I got this then." He jerks his head down the alley and begins to move. "Let's go."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! 
> 
> There has been SO much going on the last couple of days or I would have uploaded Monday or yesterday. To make up for it, I’m spoiling you rotten today! 
> 
> I’m uploading this chapter of Run and the next one to follow. I’m also uploading The Storm which is a small little cute fic without smut.
> 
> To make up for the missing smut in The Storm, my beta, bestie and for this fic, CO-WRITER has uploaded the fic we worked on together: Body Heat, full to the brim of smut! 
> 
> We did this together for the ‘I can explain’ competition hosted by ultimatebethylficlist and catch this: WE WON! 
> 
> Thank you everyone who did vote for us. Winning was the icing on the cake for me and Wallflow3r as we simply enjoyed partaking and co-writing, it was heaps of fun!
> 
> Thank you as always to your amazing comments and my favourite gal: wallflow3r ❤️

“You really shouldn’t come.”

“Y’know, Princess,” Daryl grunts from up ahead. “The first three times you said it I didn’t leave an’ now you’re just pissin’ me off. Give it a rest woulda.”

Beth sighs and looks to the sun. So far down in the sky. The Heat so close. She can feel it tugging at every pore and follicle, every beat of her heart vibrates through her chest and every pound of her pulse pushes more wetness between her legs. Her cunt is its own living thing now, separate from her. Every step brings her sharp pleasure that tips on the edge of pain. Her pussy lips so swollen and so wet, her inner thighs too and she can _smell_ it. Every single step she takes she can smell it afresh.

It’s hell.

It’s pure hell and yet Daryl is holding up far better than her. Pacing ahead, barely looking back at her, although she notes when they do pause at any point, the tent of his cock even in his loose pants. There’s no shame in it, it just is but it’s like he won’t let her see. Must play in part with the reason he doesn’t want to fuck her. She wonders what changed his mind. He clearly has fucked women before but now he won’t take her or by the implications of his words, any woman unless she’s his mate. Before she didn’t want him to come because of the shame of her secret, but now that it’s out in the open, it’s not the reason she’s telling him to stay back.

It’s the woods. There’s something in there. Some kind of creature or thing, maybe multiple things. Nothing comes back out of there and the pair of them are heading in that direction like it’s just a day out.  _Nothing_ comes out. Beth’s not sure why she doesn’t feel unsettled by that. It’s not so much that she doesn’t care as she doesn’t feel like it applies to them. Maybe it’s stupid but with a savage man of the Waste Lands at her side wielding a crossbow, she’s not afraid. There’s still something in there regardless. There’s formalities that should be met. Warning him away from danger being the main one; reminding him what he’s doing.

“‘Nother ten minutes then we’re there. We’ll find a spot, check it out then split ‘fore the Heat comes,”’ Daryl speaks from up-ahead. “Try an’ sleep through it or summat. Don’t look for meat, the hunt’s gonna get you trackin’ scents an’ put you straight in the path’a danger.”

“Could put me in the path of my mate,” Beth pushes back as she meets up with him.

His spine goes straight with her presence and she watches in fascination as his shoulders bulge, threatening the seam of his hoodie before he swallows the Wolf back into his human skin. It’s truly erotic, the control he has on himself.

“Could put you in the path of a cunt lookin’ to make you his chew toy.”

Beth rubs at her forehead as a headache begins to form. “We keep havin’ the same conversation, y’know that?”

“Yeah,” Daryl says harshly. “‘Cause you don’t listen. Stubborn.”

“Am not,” she mutters petulantly and then clamps her lips tight at his pointed look. “Whatever.”

“C’mon. We need to keep walkin’.”

At this point Beth would like to mention that she’s hungry again and so thirsty it’s a cruel joke how wet she is between her legs. She doesn’t mention how thirsty she really is though or starving because of the spoiled brat comment. She’s a _Princess_ not a spoilt brat and she was raised correctly. Princess’s don’t complain and so they do keep walking. The closer they near the more the sky falls away from red to black and very soon it’s night. Just five short hours from the Heat. They reach the tree line and stop, heaving breaths and sweating profoundly. It truly is hot, has been all the hours they’ve travelled and Beth is so thirsty at this point she would drink her own blood to soothe her raw throat.

“I’ll walk you in a few paces then go an’ start back. You meet me back at that alley tomorrow, you ‘member how to get there?” Daryl asks as he scrubs his forehead with the back of his hand.

Beth nods, pushing her fingers through her hair and the simple movement of her arm reveals how tightly her dress has stuck to her. Sweat is drenching her skin and instead of this heat she’s praying for cold, cold rain to spill down her. Hopefully she can find a stream of some sort in the woods. Avoid whatever it is that seems to kill Wolves and stay low. Not as easy as she’s making it sound in her head but there was no other choice earlier and there isn’t now.

“Even if I don’t, I’ll smell you out. Be stronger tomorrow, from the Heat,” she replies softly.

Something about the stillness of the trees make her feel she should be just as still: quiet, respectful. It feels ancient, pulses with magic and myth. Her skin is thrumming and she can’t tell if that’s the woods or the Heat or how aroused she is. The worst part is she can’t even get herself off. It’ll tempt the Wolf far too much and she’ll go looking for a beast to breed her. So she has to sustain in this misery until after and then maybe she can get a private moment at some point, a chance to find some release with her fingers.

“All right, c’mon,” Daryl instructs, leading the way again.

Beth steps through after him and takes a moment to look back at the plain, empty land they’ve been travelling for miles. Turning back to Daryl’s broad shoulders, she follows him deep inside, her bare feet squelching in the wet mud. There must be water somewhere and she intends to find it tonight. Washing will feel amazing and it keeps her going, imagining the dirt and sweat sloughing off skin.

“This will do. Should get outta here,” Beth speaks up.

Daryl stops and turns to face her, glancing around once before he nods. Beth nods back and begins to lift her slip, laying it over a branch.

Daryl sucks in a shaking breath. “What’re you doin’?”

She looks up at him, at his tortured face and licks her lips in something akin to anxiety. “Keepin’ it safe so I don’t have to go back naked,” she answers as she unbinds her hair.

He watches each lock fall into place around her shoulders and breasts before his eyes yawn wide with hunger. She shivers, his gaze trailing from her nipples to her wet inner thighs as he begins to take off the bow.

Undressing.

“Daryl…” She squeaks softly. “S’not supposed to happen yet. There’s four hours to go.”

“Y’should go, Princess,” he whispers calmly, evenly.

She shudders, watching as he lowers his bow to the ground and stretches back to full height and then _taller_ , hair growing out thicker.

“Daryl, _fight it,_ ” Beth hisses.

Being fucked would be the absolute best thing that could happen to her right now, with her clutching cunt and pounding clit, lips so swollen they ache. It would be, but it wouldn’t for him. He doesn’t want to fuck women who aren’t his mate and that’s his choice. She has to respect that. She can’t not, it’s not who she is. She was taught kindness and compassion. She was raised right. These are the values her father instilled in her and for as long as her heart beats she will honour them, them and him. Daryl’s losing himself to the Wolf but she can be his voice of reason right now, she can help him like he’s helped her. It’s the least she can do.

“Daryl, just fight it an’ get outta here. You don’t wanna do this ‘member? You want your mate. You wanna breed your mate. I can’t bare you children, I can’t even knot, I’m not worth it. _Please_.”

Daryl’s eyes shrink and grow, shrink and grow, yo-yoing with his control. “Just go.” He pants brokenly.

Fine.

She can’t break him out of it but she can outrun him, she can. Licking her lips, she takes a step back but then he follows, his eyes dilated so far her nipples tighten. She’s not sure if she knew he would do that or not but her heart is racing, pounding behind her rib cage.

“Go!” He barks and just like earlier she can’t not, but she also _can’t_ because he keeps following her. “Go!” He repeats with teeth that are no longer human but cram themselves obscenely in a human mouth.

“I’m tryin’!” She yells hoarsely, everything swelling in her cunt and pushing out sweet smelling juices.

Daryl groans with a shudder and then his shoulders swell, his chest pushing out and expanding, his top tearing. “Fuck! I know, Jesus, I can’t- I _can’t_.”

It’s maddeningly terrifying and exciting that she doesn’t know what he can’t do. Can’t give in, can’t stop it, can’t not chase her, can’t stay still. Can’t. Can’t _what_? Her pulse quickens as her pussy clutches and he growls so fiercely she jumps back a step. As she stumbles he falls down onto his knees like a broken man, head bowed between his shoulders. When it snaps up to look at her, he steals all the breath from her chest, his nose forming into a snout and pupils expanding, crazy and wild; unhinged.

“ _Run_.”


	7. Chapter 7

In that second, Daryl lunges with a snarl, Shifting in his journey through the air and landing on all fours before her. No longer a man, but a drooling beast. Beth shrieks in part terror and part arousal, the adrenaline pumping through her bloodstream and her cunt. Daryl howls and sprints forward, teeth snapping. She dodges with another shattered scream, falling down onto her bare belly and breasts. The wind breaks out of her mouth desperately before she scrabbles against the dirt with her nails and propels herself forward.

“Daryl, stop!” She shouts as she runs, the air sucking the words into a void. “There’s somethin’ in here, remember! There’s somethin’ comin’!”  
  
Daryl’s jaws snap at her ankles and she’s not even disappointed because she didn’t believe she would get through anyway. He’s lost to the Wolf now. Gasping; legs pumping, sweat pours down Beth’s temples as she picks up speed, nearly falling over herself again. In her next step she stumbles, catching herself against the bark of the tree and grunting as she knocks the breath right out of her own lungs for the second time. Sweat stings her eyes and her hair sticks to her skin, Daryl’s panting breaths not far behind. Her knees are so weak she falls when she tries to run but it saves her from Daryl’s lunge at her back.

Right now he could fuck or kill her. The Heat is all about the thrill of the hunt, both malicious and delicious. Jesus, if he’s like this now… what will he be like when the Heat hits? Falling to her hands and knees, she attempts to crawl until she can get her feet under her again but she’s so weak she’s trembling. When a large shadow looms over her and then a paw presses to her back, she gives in, her trembling muscles breaking under his weight. He whines over her, breath so hot on her shoulders and hair she shivers. She’s as still as she can be pressed against the cold mud with all his heat at her back, shivering at the contrast.

Her face is pressed into the mud too, her pulsing, injured cheek slimy with it and breath heavy. “Daryl,” she whispers softly as his nose presses into her hair. “You don’t wanna. You know you don’t.”

A growl rumbles through his throat and her ear as he leans back. If he fucks her they’ll just have to deal with it and if he kills her… well they’ll be nothing left to worry about. There’s something oddly peaceful with the thought. Some kind of decision now made, she goes slack. This pleases him and he moans gravelly against her spine as he nuzzles his wet nose down it, breath so hot she shivers anew. His head keeps dropping and with his descent a new thought arises. _Mate_ , she thinks with a shiver. The scent of the mate lies between her legs…

The place Daryl is heading.

Where she only just went slack she goes rigid again in awe of what could be happening and Daryl responds instantly, his breath a growl and his paw pressing harder in her shoulder blades. Beth hisses as his claws begin to puncture the first layer of her skin, raising wells of blood. They run like tiny rivers down her back and she squeezes her eyes closed, willing her body to calm but it’s so hard. So hard because _what if._ What if he is her mate? What if they were meant to find each other? What if this is who she’s destined to be with, to-

Her thoughts snap back sharply. Destined to breed with. Only she can’t. She couldn’t breed with her husband. Couldn’t even knot. Daryl seems to hesitate at the dip of her spine, pulling her from her thoughts. Maybe this is where he slices his claws down her back and pulls her spine out. Maybe this is where he rears up and thrusts his swollen cock into her begging cunt, of which she can smell so keenly it must be hell for him, singing from her blood. He doesn’t. Doesn’t kill her, doesn’t fuck her. His tongue lolls out and the very tip glides between her ass cheeks. Her eyes are still closed but she can picture it so well and paired with his heavy paw it’s not hard at all to do so.

This is it. It’s true. It’s real. He’s mating her. The Bonding has begun with the first warm glide of his tongue. She takes in a shaky breath as the thick muscle of his tongue worms deeper between the crack of her ass and lathes at her puckered asshole. Beth whimpers and Daryl whimpers too, making room for her raised hips as she pushes up on her knees, offering her cunt. His tongue slides further down, rimming at her begging walls and she sobs because of both the action and his claws, digging deeper in her skin. The arousal lies solidly on the edge of the knife: the cruel balance of pleasure and pain, almost overwhelming. The Bonding always leaves scars. These will be hers.

The insistent digging of his claws into the layers of her flesh, pulling them up and pushing into the muscle beneath will ensure it. He growls thickly, his mouth sounding stuffed full as her wetness pools into it.

She pants brokenly and when he digs his tongue in deeper she actually laughs, thick and clogged and all kinds of wrong but she does. “You wanted to fuck your mate huh, Daryl? Well you… _God_ , you found her. You found me. I’m your _mate_. Jesus, I’m your mate. I’m yours. I’m yours, I’m yours,” she chants as he gets faster with her words, desperate, tongue heavy and huge and fucking into her.

Beth puts all her weight into her knees and rocks back onto it, tears heading into her eyes as the claws in her back pull in and out too, tearing her open further. The thin rivulets of blood turn into heavy flowing rivers much like her pussy juices and it’s perfect, it’s so perfect. The pleasure is tightening in her belly, clutching at her temples and it’s building in a way it’s never done so before. It’s building in a way that says maybe she can knot, that maybe she just needed her mate first to do it, to work it out. The husband she took was taken in desperation. Maggie denounced the throne and she’d had two years worth of bleeds and Heats but she hadn’t found a mate.

Of course now she knows why. He was too far, lost here in the Waste Lands. Her husband could never do this to her, never did this to her. The irrational need consuming her veins, the juices pouring out of her cunt, the mad rocking of her knees. She’s never been this wild. Twenty four hours with a savage and she’s become one. But then, he is her mate. He is. He didn’t kill her and he didn’t fuck her. He claimed her, took her wetness in his mouth and swallowed down the very essence of her, even now slurping obscenely in the still darkness of the trees.

Getting more excited, faster, deeper. It almost hurts, almost feels like too much but she’s riding it and she’s so close to something she can’t articulate there’s tears building in her eyes. Is it the knotting? Surely that’s something she can only do on his cock, her pussy shrinking so harshly as his cock swells so wide they tangle. Maybe she has to be the Wolf for that. She’s never been allowed to discuss hybrid fucking, she doesn’t know how it works but it seems Daryl is keen to get there, keen to claim her in the most final way and he retracts his body.

The claws in her back pull free from her torn flesh with a insidious squelch, blood splattering her raised ass and thighs, maybe even her pussy. His tongue pulls free from her cunt even as her walls chase him, her mouth releasing whimpers and her eyes streaming. When he takes her by the hips and flips her on her back it kills. Mud and leaves and dirt clinging to her bleeding wounds, mixing in with her blood. It’s so savage. She’s only ever fucked in a bed, on clean sheets with clean skin. She couldn’t be so far away from those experiences as she is right now with Daryl looming over her.

He’s so tall as his Wolf and broad too, swallowing up all her visual space. The fur on him is a chocolate brown threaded with the same grey as his human beard. He’s stunning and she reaches her shaking hand out to him, her fingers sinking into the fur and spreading. He rumbles deep in his chest, the rumble turning to a purr of content as his paws raise, claws running so dangerously sharp over her collar bones. Beth sucks in a breath and holds it, arching as he drags those claws down her breasts and vulnerable stomach, scratching deep into her flesh so more blue blood wells and glides into her belly button. She will scar here too.

It makes her throat catch to think that in another life those scars would have stretched and thinned with her rounded belly. They would have moulded and made room for the bright red stretch marks that bloomed beneath them. Stretch marks of honour that she could bare a child for her lover, a boy to rule after he’s long buried in the dirt. Daryl pauses here, distracting her so he can dig lightly with his wicked sharp claws. Beth hisses as her skin parts like melted butter, tips sinking in deeper. Soon after, they move to her hips. Her eyes stare into his for a while before they fall to his chest, to the thinnest patch of fur around his belly and then finally the thick, jutting cock between his legs. It’s huge. Thick as her wrist and so wet, God he’s so wet for her, dripping pre-cum and staining his fur.

She licks her lips and arches her hips higher, pressing into his claws; pressing into the pain. “Mate me, Daryl. Please. I want it. I want it so _bad_.”

Daryl snarls back at her, ears standing high on his head as he stares down at her thin belly twitching under his painful grip, smeared blue from her blood and red raw from his scratches. He releases her hips to crawl over her, the soaked head of him brushing past her coarse curls and then against her clit. She whines desperately, her fingers twisting in his fur as he nuzzles his way deeper between her legs, spreading them with his thick thighs. It’s wide enough to ache and she moans lowly at all the dizzying sensations attacking her, heightened by the Heat looming so close.

“You want me,” Beth chokes softly. “You want my cunt.”

He growls savagely, teeth snapping at her throat and her eyes squeeze closed as she screams. He moans hollowly back at her through the clench of his teeth, his hips rocking forward and pressing into her pussy. The stretch is accompanied by an intense burning and fat tears roll down her cheeks, her scream spiralling into hysteria. Excitement pours thick and heavy into Daryl’s next thrust and she grunts under all his weight, her face hot in the nest of fur on his chest. On the next thrust the teeth in her neck change shape and become blunter, the fur beneath her hands slowly receding to skin and the cock in her cunt shrinking.

When he releases the bite and pulls back with her blood on his mouth she can’t stop staring at him. One hand tangles in her hair and the other slides under her waist, pulling her into a sitting position and the further yanking her up onto his lap. She gasps as she rocks down onto his jutting cock nestled in his lap, eye to eye with him as sweat slicks their chests and sticks them together. Their gasps mingle in the air between them as he keeps plunging, keeps gliding because she’s so _wet_. The slap of their flesh is so loud and so intoxicating, her breasts swelling as if milk is filling in preparation for the pup she’s about to breed. Her nipples tighten and she digs her fingernails in Daryl’s pecs and shoulders, her back burning in excruciating pain and her cunt singing with nothing but pleasure.

“You’re mine,” he snarls against her mouth.

Beth clamps down on his bottom lip with her teeth and pushes against his chest. He falls down onto his back, his arms catching him so he can lean on his forearms. She falls with him, her hands catching with a ringing slap against his chest, balancing there as she smirks at him and he stares back at her, eyes hot and dark. The way he looks at her makes her feel brazen beyond belief. So brazen that she rolls her hips and belly sinfully, shaking her hair back like she was made for this moment.

She whispers softly, “a woman mounts you after all, _mate_.”

“S’cause you’re my mate that you ain’t still on your hands an’ knees, _bitch_. Don’t make me put you back there, _unh_. I’m enjoyin’ myself.” He pants with wild, desperate eyes.

She gasps back, her hips rising higher and faster, slamming down on his cock until it pierces her deep, so deep. God, please, she might. There’s some kind of mountain she’s riding and she’s sure she can make it, she’s sure she can pummel over the edge.

Daryl growls, fucking his hips up into her as his hand reaches for the dangling ends of her hair, pulling so hard her head snaps back on her neck. “You got the tightest pussy I ever felt. An’ s’it gettin’ tighter. Y’sure you ain’t gonna knot, Princess? Y’sure you ain’t gonna do that for me?”

 _No_.

She’s not sure of anything anymore.

“Please,” Beth sobs brokenly as he slams so hard in her she can’t breathe, her head so far back she’s staring into the moon. “Please Shift. Please, I need it.”

He obeys her. Everything gets big. Thick. Hairy. The Wolf emerges once more and when his cock grows and keeps slamming into her swollen, begging, squelching cunt Beth’s sure she’s gonna meet the Gods.

“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop! Yes, yes, _Jesus_. I think- I think I’m gonna… I’m gonna. Holy _fuck_!”

Every muscle locks. Every blood vessel swells. Every pulse point explodes. Between her legs is pure fire. An eruption of something hot and sweet and so wet. Daryl roars and his hand tears out of her hair, claws yanking out strands. They’re not gone for long and as Beth begins to return to her body they tear down her back, slicing through the welling cuts there and ripping them open so they pour blood down her back and ass cheeks. There’s swelling, so much swelling and jerking and growing between her legs. Beth can barely breathe, her scream sucked into the void as she experiences a knot for the first time in her life.

A river of hot seed explodes in her pussy, filling her so full it spills out into their lap, Daryl’s howl wounded as his cock swells and her pussy closes, trapping him. Her brain seems to explode as her cunt gives one final, desperate clutch and all the wind blows out of her, leaving her empty and loose. She collapses, falling heavily against Daryl’s chest and knocking him in a sprawl to the floor as she slowly slides out of consciousness.

_I heard if you pass out, it’s a boy._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your comments and a massive thank you to my beta and soul sister: wallflow3r ❤️

Consciousness brings one thought. One thought that she knows deep in her heart is true.

_I’m pregnant._

She’s distracted from the thought at least for a second, by the tongue lathing at her naked back. She hums softly and Daryl hums back, lapping up the blood and dirt on her skin, tracing the deep, raw cuts he created with his claws. 

Mate.

The scent of him, of them wraps all around her and when she focuses on her body some more she finds the aching pang between her legs first. Daryl’s cock is half hard and soaking wet, stuck to her inner thigh where her legs are spread ungracefully wide.  If her mother could see her now: a slut taken by a savage and bred. Because she has bred. She knows she has. All royalty do and she doesn’t know how or why, why she couldn’t then and why she has now but she _knows_. The seed he planted inside her has stuck and soon it will grow like a flower blooming in the soil. _He_ will grow, swelling her belly and breasts and thighs. Plump and fat with child and milk. The sense of pride is there unexpectedly, mixing with the joy. 

She did it.

She knotted and she bred and she’s going to birth a child. She’s going to birth Daryl’s son. His tongue keeps lapping and she lulls in it. The Heat is less than a half hour away, she can feel it like wooden splinters shoved under her fingernails. What they just did was the most savage, wild act Beth has ever engaged in. She can’t imagine how it’s going to be so very soon, how the Heat is going to infect them. In the quiet she almost falls asleep, Daryl’s paw caging her in close and keeping her warm. Before she does though she has a sudden dawning realisation, a connection of strings that tie together in her head, creating a verdict.

_I heard if you pass out it’s a boy._

_A great leader will come to light; the child of enemies will heal the barren lands._

_The_ barren lands or _her_ barren land?

For so long she and her people thought the prophecy to mean the healing of their crops, their lands but what if this child is the birth of that prophecy? Hasn’t _what if_ already been proven tonight with his conception? This savage man of the Waste Lands is her mate. She’s been bred. She’s with child. Beth turns her face into his chest and presses closer so he’s forced to stop cleaning her and lie on his back. He goes with the protesting of his muscles before they relax. She already mounted him, there’s really nothing more she can do to strip his control. 

As she settles into place, letting his fur brush all her soft skin, she takes in a deep breath and lets the Shift happen. Her legs elongate, her mouth stretches into a snout, her skull shrinks too and her bones crack slow quick and briskly. Daryl lies still until she’s a Wolf curled at his side. They’ll fuck again when the Heat comes, it’s inevitable but for now, they curl together and sleep. 

* * *

Beth’s eyes snap open and she is immediately aware of two things.

The Heat is here.

They’re not alone. 

She springs to all four paws immediately, stirring Daryl next to her. He comes alert just as fast and they stand shoulder to shoulder as they face the glowing eyes in the dark. They duck and hide, disappearing and reappearing in blurry shadows too fast for even her Wolf eyes. 

_What the hell are these things?_

_I dunno but we ain’t fightin’._

She jolts a step in surprise as Daryl’s voice answers her, panicking the things in the trees so they scatter in a cold wind. It doesn’t take them long to resurface again though and in double the numbers, more glowing eyes staring out at them milky white.

_What is this?_

_Mind link. Mate mind link. S’rare. Guess that blue blood gives you more than gold in your eyes._

Even in her head she can hear his sarcasm and she huffs a whine. He throws her one back and Beth feels another breeze.

_They’re getting closer._

_Daryl_ … she thinks uneasily, pawing nervously at the ground with a low whine and her ears flat.

He falls in to flank with her. _I know_. 

 _Run_.

It’s more than a thought. It has all the authority and power of a command. She’s springing in the opposite direction before she can even fully process it. Daryl is right behind her. The things flee the trees all at once and give chase, splitting in several directions to attack Beth and Daryl on all sides. They’re hot on his heels more than hers and she turns her head to snarl, narrowly avoiding a tree. Daryl snaps at her and she turns her head forward again, yelping as a flash of white smacks into her face. Opening her jaws wide, she bites into something fleshy and tears.  There’s a kind of wounded sound, a creature she’s never heard before, and she drops whatever it is when a poisonous, foul liquid floods her mouth. 

_Don’t bite them!_

The next flying thing that comes at her she head butts into a tree and then tears into. Her claws come back slicked in green goo before they fall back to the dirt and she throws herself forward. Daryl manages to catch up to her, ramming her into a cave to the left.

 _Hide_.

It doesn’t work because by the time Beth processes his command, the creatures have enough time to see their new turn of direction and follow closely behind, their breath rattling in the night air. 

 _Trapped_ , she thinks desperately, so panicked she can only think with in single thoughts.

 _Fuck. Just claw them to pieces, Princess_.

The word is less a title and more an endearment, leaving her full of pride and bravado as she spins with a snarl and slices her paw through the air. Her claws catch in the things throat and while it dangles before her in the air, she can get a good look at it.  The vicious hot anger pumping through her bloodstream is carried and magnified by the Heat, leaving her drooling even as she takes in the hideous thing. It has milky white eyes like it’s blind but no nose to compensate, leaving them with just a mouth full of razor sharp teeth in three jagged rows. 

But there’s no empty nose socket in its soft skull, everything is just pulled tight over the hollow like a worn sock. Its body is average height, just a little shorter than her in her human form and its body has one arm, a hand full of four branch- like fingers and a thumb.  It’s the most grotesque thing Beth has ever seen and her hatred for it fuels her with a surge of strength. With her paw she squeezes and her claws slice through the throat of it like a wire through cheese. The head pops offs and falls away, the body dropping and jerking even headless.

She turns her face away from the squirming thing, chest heaving and fur matted with its congealed green blood. Daryl is fighting another one and two lay dead at his feet, throats torn open. He’s obviously a lot better at this than Beth, and she wonders if he’s killed before.  Not animals, they don’t count but people, Wolves, things like these. He’s her mate and he’s put a child in her belly but she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t know him at all. He holds the last one by the throat and tears out its stomach. What comes out in Daryl’s clamped fist is nothing like the organs she’s seen come out of animals or Wolves.

It’s something completely new to her, a whole mess of something and he drops it to the floor with one projected thought: _vile_. She can’t help agreeing and falls down to four paws to meet him, nuzzling against him when he drops to his paws too. He moans into her fur and pulls her body against him as he sits on her hind legs. Her cunt feels different as the Wolf but there’s something so familiar about his cock pressing into it when she settles into his lap. Her walls part for him and she howls, pressing him further down with her paws so she’s lay over his chest. He fucks into her, his paws gripping at her tail as he plunges between her legs. 

 _Come back,_ she thinks desperately.

In the same moment they both Shift. 

All the blood from their kills is still staining their skin and hair, the scent rancid but not overpowering enough for them to stop. She fucks her hips down, gasping into his neck as her grips her ass cheeks from below and pounds her, flexing and pushing into the heels of his feet for leverage.

“I’m pregnant,” she bursts on a deep roll of her hips. “I am. I’m bred with your boy.”

Daryl moans brokenly and swells inside her, choking as his dick twitches with more seed. Beth sobs, pressing her face against his throat and biting into the thick muscle as she knots again, leaving her giddy with excitement that she can just _do_ that now. 

They fall quiet as they become still and he grows soft inside her, their pants slowing as she grips his biceps and he her ass cheeks. After a moment, he punctures the silence. “Did we breed? Really?”

Her teeth retract and he hisses before she lathes the bite with her tongue. “Yes. Our boy. He’s growin’ in my belly.”

Daryl moans softly and slides one hand from her ass and brings it between their slick skin, peeling it apart so he can lay a hand on her belly. “We should go back. Claim the throne.”

She frowns a little, worry tugging that she’ll offend him. He picks up on her reluctance. “What? ‘Cause I’m a mutt an’ he’s a bastard child you don’t wanna go back?”

Beth pulls back with a deeper frown. “We may be mates but you barely know me. Don’t tell me what I’m thinkin’.”

“So what are you thinkin’?” He asks quietly, hand still pressed firmly to her belly.

She purses her lips. “That I don’t wanna go back. We can have a home here, together.” 

“The Waste Lands ain’t no place for a baby,” Daryl growls. “Someone would sell him for sacrifice or slavery the minute they found out. My son ain’t havin’ the life I did.”

“He’s my son too,” she shoots back hotly.

“He’s royalty,” Daryl argues.

“We won’t know that until he’s born; until we see his eyes,” Beth argues back.

“I know he is.”

“You hope he is,” she corrects.

He snarls at her and it’s so much more powerful squeezing out of his human throat. “Don’t push me.”

The Heat is still ongoing and it’s infectious so she can’t be blamed for her response. “What’re you gonna do?”

Baring his teeth in a terrifying smile, Beth feels her cunt pound. “Remind you of your place, _bitch_.”

The hand on her ass raises to her hair again but this time doesn’t yank back. This time he pushes her away and before she can even settle on her knees he’s pushing her head down as he reclines back on his ass.

Down to his cock still mostly soft but growing again, swelling with blood. “Not all’a my babies grow in your belly. Some’a them you swallow.”

The hot pulse between her legs is enough to make her drop her own head without his assistance and swollen his cock whole. 

He howls brokenly into the balmy air and plunges his hips forward. “Such a good bitch.”

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter! I can't believe it! 
> 
> I've so enjoyed sharing Run with you guys and I'm absolutely bowled over by the response I've had. Thank you for every comment, kudos, favourite, follow, etc. It's been nothing but inspiring. If I have any GoT fans who read Unburnt, I'm currently working on another Jonerys fic that I'm so excited to share with you and for my Bethyl/Brick/Brickyl fans, I have a special treat coming your way straight after that ;).
> 
> Thank you as always Wallflower, my smutty soul sister for believing in me and encouraging me to write this; for all your time spent beta'ing my works while juggling mommy life. I can't think of anyone more awesome than you! Just y'know, don't tell my girlfriend that! Seriously, I love this chick, have you read her fics yet!?

Beth's throat closes tight and she gags as the head of Daryl's cock hits the back of it.

When she looks at him he's all wild, Wolf eyes and teeth but human nose and mouth, a distortion between the two faces that are both equally _his._ She moans softly and tries to slow a little, the breath heavy in her nose as her lips form a tighter hold on the thick base of his cock. Daryl growls and surges up, having none of it as his fingers wind into her hair but just rest there, not guiding or forcing. That's a sliver of control, Beth supposes, even if the claws punching out of his fingers are digging into her scalp. She pushes her mouth half way down his length in a bid to breathe and then twirls her tongue around in her mouth, licking at the vein crawling the underside of his cock.

Daryl moans softly. " _Fuck,_ s'so good."

The praise spirals through her blood stream like hot liquid and spills between her legs, lighting up her nerve endings along the way before it explodes in her clit and pussy lips. So fat, so swollen, they rub together even when she shifts on her knees for balance. God, the Wolf is _ravenous_ in this Heat. It's the first one she's ever experienced with a mate and not a bumbling idiot plunging between her legs admittedly but Jesus, it's so different. Everything is so much brighter, so much colour bleeding into the world. The scents; the sounds, they all attack her.

Their heavy breathing, the moist earth, the foul blood on their skin. She glances up and pauses with her lips curled over the head of his juicy cock, staring at him in wonder. All stretched out for her, his belly pulls tense but he's not perfectly lean; he doesn't make her feel inferior to him at all. No, his beauty is made for hers to make something even more beautiful and stunning to behold. He _is_ stunning: biceps she would have to wrap her two hands around and thick shoulders, collar bones sharp and cheekbones sharper, his jaw in the race too for razor edge beauty. His eyes are at half mast as his cock flags hard and full, swelling in her mouth.

She whimpers as she laps at the pre-cum leaking from the tip. He grins at her, everything about it so tight as he controls his own pleasure as well as the Wolf. When his lips pull further back though, he reveals his canines nestled deep in his gums; elongating. Beth pulls off his cock with a an obscenely wet _pop_ to watch him Shift. He does it faster every time and this time is by far the fastest, one second her fist is wrapped around soft flesh and then harder, leaner fur covered skin. He pants at her, tongue lolling out his mouth as she watches the pre-cum _gush_ from the weeping tip. It's so fucking hot when he's wet for her.

There's no way she can fit that in her mouth, she'll split her cheeks before she can try. So she laps at all the free flowing juices, licking him like she used to lick the leftover jam on her fingers after a cherry tart. Daryl howls and lets his head roll on his shoulders, eye lids flickering. The more he responds the faster her tongue flicks, eager to please him and it seems she is by the grunt that punches through his teeth.

After another minute, Beth pulls her head back to whisper, "you gonna spray me with your seed, _mate?_ "

Daryl throws his head back and keens to the moon, the moon that calls for their blood and entices their heat; their desires, forcing with a powerful, hot surge intense lashes of his seed. They hit her across the bridge of her nose and the bottom of her lip, some ungracefully dripping off her chin in the most unladylike manner. She licks at it, running with the savage, unladylike moment and moaning obscenely until Daryl is more conscious and returns to lean down and lick at it too, tongue slobbering over her cheeks and chin. She watches in fascination as he cleans up his own release from her face and chest, whining quietly under his breath before he Shift's again, shrinking down closer to her height.

Daryl glances at her with big eyes full of something she doesn't understand but makes her nothing but excited. Not knowing how to react, she stays absolutely still as she wonders what he sees when he looks at her so deeply, so raw. Finally, he takes her wrist and tips his chin in a random direction. "Let's clean you up, Princess."

Beth stares at his clenching back in rapture as he leads the way.

* * *

The cool water hitting her face makes her gasp in delight and Daryl does it again, cupping it as she drinks some from her own hands. It's so cool and sweet in her throat but it doesn't quite wash away the taste of her mate and she shivers. He's gentler with the next handful of water, tipping it over her head so it soaks her hair slowly, slicking it to her skin. Beth's eyes open where they had fluttered closed in rapture. Daryl stares back at her: in her eyes, at her face and then down, surveying different parts of her. His yawning gaze latching onto her breasts for some time before his fingers reach up to pinch one rosy bud.

Beth moans breathlessly and presses in closer, falling into his chest as his arm cups her waist, pulling her in. Growling, his mouth descends to her throat, leaving hungry, open mouthed kisses, beard scratching her sensitive skin while his fingers play with her nipple, twisting it almost cruelly so she keens with the mix of pain and pleasure. Her cunt is throbbing and while not being anything new, it has her attention.

"You're so beautiful," he moans into her throat. "My Queen."

A sweet smile picks up the corners of her mouth and she nuzzles into his chest. "So're you, mate."

He groans again when he stops torturing her nipple and moves his hand down to her belly, pressing his large palm over it so his fingers span hip to hip. "Can't believe we bred our boy. I thought…"

"Me too," she responds with a grin that stretches her cheeks. "Me too. It's a miracle, Daryl."

A hum rumbles in his chest and through hers, reminding her of her one, twisted and swollen nipple. "I want you," she whispers.

Daryl groans and turns her violently, pushing her down so she can just about catch herself on the rock she was just leaning on. The pads of her hands tear against it instantly and she hisses as the sting is joined by her knees, scraping against the edge when he pushes into her. The throb of her cunt catches the head of his cock and he thrusts deep with a broken moan, shoving her further up the rock and tearing her hands some more. Beth lifts her leg onto the edge to try and help him with the tight fit. Daryl's hand falls to it, gripping her thigh tight and spreading her.

The glide of his cock into her pussy is magical in this position and she groans, jolting as he fucks his hips hard into hers. The sound of their wet skin is loud and intoxicating, punching into her cunt as hard as Daryl's fat cock.

"Jesus s'so good," Beth slurs.

"You gonna knot for me 'gain, Princess? See how well you do it for me," Daryl rumbles thickly.

She sobs, her neck flopping down between her shoulders as he pounds her, his hands gripping and squeezing and massaging through the deepest fuck of her life. The walls of her pussy flutter and shrink, swallowing and gaping. The knot is coming, she knows it is and her belly winds tighter with anticipation, rocking back onto him where she can, her knees and hands leaving smears of blue on the rock as she bleeds. The scents are overwhelming delicious: blood and kill, sex and sweat, cunt and cock. The scents and the sounds, they end up being her downfall and when Daryl releases a particularly delicious moan she slides over the edge, her cunt clamping down on him, claiming him.

"Oh, _fuccck._ Oh fuck. Oh fuck," he chants brokenly, slamming through the tight clutch of her cunt to hit Beth in a place she didn't even know she had.

The next thrust sends her skittering against the surface of the rock, leaving stinging marks on her belly and hips. She whimpers as she grows even _tighter_ and she can feel every vein, edge ridge; every bump of his dick inside her. Daryl goes silent and still and then just _breaks._ He falls over her, squishing her into the uncomfortable rock and pants like a horse, belly punching into her spine as he does so.

"Jesus Christ."

"You said it," she laughs breathlessly and then she passes out.

* * *

 When her eyelid flutter open some time later, there's sun. Hot and red, tinting the world.

"Hey, Princess."

She looks up and Daryl is there. She's in his arms, cradled in his chest and he's in the water with her again, dipping her in the cool liquid. The palms of her hands are in there and the water is beautifully soothing on her grazes.

"Hey," she whispers softly. "Nearly time to go?"

"Yeah, just wanted to wash up first."

So she gets down into the water and they wash: themselves, each other; together. After, they climb out and retrace their steps, hunting until they find her dress and then his bow. He has no clothes, so they begin to leave together with him still naked. He said he could find some on that line that he found Beth's dress so they just need to keep going until they get there. It's empty lands for a while though so there's no risk of anyone seeing him, she'll just be blessed with his deliciousness. As they approach the tree line that leads out of the woods, she sighs deeply and thinks about how different her life was before she walked through that tree line.

A barren runaway, fleeing her land where she was their Princess and trusting a man of the Waste Lands. Now here she is, bred with a baby boy, by her mate; a man of the Waste Lands but a man that was made for her. From the moment she met him there was a pattern, a natural ease to their shared company. He made her think and stop being erratic. They didn't know it but that easy sync, that pattern they found was made for them, woven in the tangles of their life to be unpicked when they found each other. So many strings she had before, now she has only one: the one that leads to him.

Now she must go home, with her baby and her mate and claim her throne. She's not sure how they'll get there or what troubles they'll face on their way. Daryl has somewhat of a life here, a brother he mentioned and a friend. There may be some difficulties in their way of travelling but as long as they stand together;stand strong, they can do anything.

They can do it together and whenever they face trouble, they'll run.


End file.
